09.10.17

The moniker Ibeyi, a musical project of Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz, is taken from the Yoruba word for the spirit shared by twins. On Ash, the luscious follow-up to their 2015 debut album, the French-Cuban sisters layer their voices with tight harmonies to channel this spirit.

There is an element of prayer folded into Ash. Songs like Deathless and Transmission/Michaelion centre around the call-and-response structure of a preacher and their congregation. A gospel choir joins triumphantly alongside an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s audiobook Citizen: An American Lyric to announce a shift of scenery to serene tranquility – “like underwater”.

Elsewhere, the twins team up with Mala Rodriguez on Me Voy for a radio-friendly reggaeton-lite track sung in Spanish. I Wanna Be Like You finds its groove on a stomping adult-contemporary beat. Ibeyi don’t wander too far from their spiritual pulpit: the song’s middle eight is delivered like a sermon when the drums fall out and the lyrics return to metaphors of rivers and the sun.

The album is ripe with samples, ranging from a Bulgarian choir on I Carried this for Years, to Michelle Obama on the album’s striking centrepiece No Man is Big Enough for my Arms. The song could be interpreted as a contemporary reimagining of It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World for the women of 2017. The sisters declare their independence: they won’t stand still; they won’t be shamed. The song ends with a tsunami of applause as Obama says what every young woman deserves to hear: “And I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them, and that they should make their voices heard in the world”. With Ash, Ibeyi’s voice is amplified.

Nathan Ma